Morality. The Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche Essay

Morality. The Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche - Essay Example The second dimension that Nietzsche discusses is morality relating to slaves or priests, and this primarily deals with Jewish beliefs. This dimension believes that priests loath warriors and call their desire for power an evil act, and they believe that their own poverty or simple state is called good. These two beliefs are called slave and master morality. Slave morality seems to be much more refined as compared to master morality and it is driven by a feeling of anger or resentment. It was born of Christianity as Christian love is due to hatred and therefore it is in accordance with slave morality and its derivation from ‘ressentiment.’ (Nietzsche and Kaufmann) Even though slave morality is interesting and more complex as well to understand as compared to master morality and their self-assuredness, Nietzsche is apprehensive that it makes mankind a mediocre race and people who have generally an inherent perception of slave morality would like to prefer comfort and secur ity over risk and conquest over the world. The priests believes in the slave morality and they believe that it saves them from evil and other perils of the afterlife, and the master morality will distract people from changing themselves for the better and making their present a better situation to live in. Most modern humans also perceive the slave morality in this way and act this way. Nietzsche also believes that there is a difference between the two kinds of morality be it good/bad or good/evil by giving the relevant example of lamb and bird of prey. The lamb would believe that the bird of prey is evil since it kills and that they themselves are good because they don’t kill. However, these statements become useless in the event that God has made them in such a way that they cannot kill; and not because of any moral account but simply because they are unable to, they don’t know what they would be capable of if they would be able to kill. Birds of prey similarly canno t be highlighted as wrong doers and evil simply because they are built in a way that they are to kill. If the deed, which is killing could be separated from the being that kills because it was made that way, then only could be condemn these birds for their deeds. Nietzsche also goes on to argue that there are instances when there is a deed, but no doer and then you cannot blame anyone. Such as lightning cannot be removed from the flash and seen independently and hence the fact that we view that the doer is distinct from his act is simply something we view because of society and its prejudices. Master morality is what the aspiration is so to say, slave morality is prevalent and not desirable. Nietzsche also believes that guilt originally didn’t have any moral aspects in it, and it was simply like a debt. A person who owed something to someone was in debt and guilty of it, and he owed a creditor some sum. Therefore a creditor could take advantage of that and could even make the debtor pay at any time or take penalties. This wasn’t to punish the debtor and make him feel bad about himself, but this was only for the creditor’s mirth and pleasure. Therefore punishment was like a paradox; it was cruel for the debtor and yet cheerful for the creditor and it was supposed to have been forgotten afterwards without any grudge from any party. Law and regulation is like a creditor in a society; if someone goes against the law then this means that they have broken and harmed society and they can be punished for this mistake. (Nietzsche and Kaufmann) Justice believes however that people don’t have that power to punish good or bad or evil and